第 42 页

of the balance due from the father’s estate. The motherin-

law replied that she had nothing more, the winding up

was over, and there was due to them besides Barneville an

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income of six hundred francs, that she would pay them

punctually.

Then Madame Bovary sent in accounts to two or three

patients, and she made large use of this method, which was

very successful. She was always careful to add a postscript:

‘Do not mention this to my husband; you know how

proud he is. Excuse me. Yours obediently.’ There were

some complaints; she intercepted them.

To get money she began selling her old gloves, her old

hats, the old odds and ends, and she bargained rapaciously,

her peasant blood standing her in good stead. Then on her

journey to town she picked up nick-nacks secondhand,

that, in default of anyone else, Monsieur Lheureux would

certainly take off her hands. She bought ostrich feathers,

Chinese porcelain, and trunks; she borrowed from

Felicite, from Madame Lefrancois, from the landlady at the

Croix-Rouge, from everybody, no matter where.

With the money she at last received from Barneville

she paid two bills; the other fifteen hundred francs fell due.

She renewed the bills, and thus it was continually.

Sometimes, it is true, she tried to make a calculation,

but she discovered things so exorbitant that she could not

believe them possible. Then she recommenced, soon got

confused, gave it all up, and thought no more about it.

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The house was very dreary now. Tradesmen were seen

leaving it with angry faces. Handkerchiefs were lying

about on the stoves, and little Berthe, to the great scandal

of Madame Homais, wore stockings with holes in them. If

Charles timidly ventured a remark, she answered roughly

that it wasn’t her fault.

What was the meaning of all these fits of temper? She

explained everything through her old nervous illness, and

reproaching himself with having taken her infirmities for

faults, accused himself of egotism, and longed to go and

take her in his arms.

‘Ah, no!’ he said to himself; ‘I should worry her.’

And he did not stir.

After dinner he walked about alone in the garden; he

took little Berthe on his knees, and unfolding his medical

journal, tried to teach her to read. But the child, who

never had any lessons, soon looked up with large, sad eyes

and began to cry. Then he comforted her; went to fetch

water in her can to make rivers on the sand path, or broke

off branches from the privet hedges to plant trees in the

beds. This did not spoil the garden much, all choked now

with long weeds. They owed Lestiboudois for so many

days. Then the child grew cold and asked for her mother.

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‘Call the servant,’ said Charles. ‘You know, dearie, that

mamma does not like to be disturbed.’

Autumn was setting in, and the leaves were already

falling, as they did two years ago when she was ill. Where

would it all end? And he walked up and down, his hands

behind his back.

Madame was in her room, which no one entered. She

stayed there all day long, torpid, half dressed, and from

time to time burning Turkish pastilles which she had

bought at Rouen in an Algerian’s shop. In order not to

have at night this sleeping man stretched at her side, by

dint of manoeuvring, she at last succeeded in banishing

him to the second floor, while she read till morning

extravagant books, full of pictures of orgies and thrilling

situations. Often, seized with fear, she cried out, and

Charles hurried to her.

‘Oh, go away!’ she would say.

Or at other times, consumed more ardently than ever

by that inner flame to which adultery added fuel, panting,

tremulous, all desire, she threw open her window,

breathed in the cold air, shook loose in the wind her

masses of hair, too heavy, and, gazing upon the stars,

longed for some princely love. She thought of him, of

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Leon. She would then have given anything for a single

one of those meetings that surfeited her.

These were her gala days. She wanted them to be

sumptuous, and when he alone could not pay the

expenses, she made up the deficit liberally, which

happened pretty well every time. He tried to make her

understand that they would be quite as comfortable

somewhere else, in a smaller hotel, but she always found

some objection.

One day she drew six small silver-gilt spoons from her

bag (they were old Roualt’s wedding present), begging

him to pawn them at once for her, and Leon obeyed,

though the proceeding annoyed him. He was afraid of

compromising himself.

Then, on, reflection, he began to think his mistress’s

ways were growing odd, and that they were perhaps not

wrong in wishing to separate him from her.

In fact someone had sent his mother a long anonymous

letter to warn her that he was ‘ruining himself with a

married woman,’ and the good lady at once conjuring up

the eternal bugbear of families the vague pernicious

creature, the siren, the monster, who dwells fantastically in

depths of love, wrote to Lawyer Dubocage, his employer,

who behaved perfectly in the affair. He kept him for three

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quarters of an hour trying to open his eyes, to warn him of

the abyss into which he was falling. Such an intrigue

would damage him later on, when he set up for himself.

He implored him to break with her, and, if he would not

make this sacrifice in his own interest, to do it at least for

his, Dubocage’s sake.

At last Leon swore he would not see Emma again, and

he reproached himself with not having kept his word,

considering all the worry and lectures this woman might

still draw down upon him, without reckoning the jokes

made by his companions as they sat round the stove in the

morning. Besides, he was soon to be head clerk; it was

time to settle down. So he gave up his flute, exalted

sentiments, and poetry; for every bourgeois in the flush of

his youth, were it but for a day, a moment, has believed

himself capable of immense passions, of lofty enterprises.

The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas;

every notary bears within him the debris of a poet.

He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob

on his breast, and his heart, like the people who can only

stand a certain amount of music, dozed to the sound of a

love whose delicacies he no longer noted.

They knew one another too well for any of those

surprises of possession that increase its joys a hundred-fold.

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She was as sick of him as he was weary of her. Emma

found again in adultery all the platitudes of marriage.

But how to get rid of him? Then, though she might

feel humiliated at the baseness of such enjoyment, she

clung to it from habit or from corruption, and each day

she hungered after them the more, exhausting all felicity in

wishing for too much of it. She accused Leon of her

baffled hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even

longed for some catastrophe that would bring about their

separation, since she had not the courage to make up her

mind to it herself.

She none the less went on writing him love letters, in

virtue of the notion that a woman must write to her lover.

But whilst she wrote it was another man she saw, a

phantom fashioned out of her most ardent memories, of

her finest reading, her strongest lusts, and at last he became

so real, so tangible, that she palpitated wondering,

without, however, the power to imagine him clearly, so

lost was he, like a god, beneath the abundance of his

attributes. He dwelt in that azure land where silk ladders

hang from balconies under the breath of flowers, in the

light of the moon. She felt him near her; he was coming,

and would carry her right away in a kiss.

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Then she fell back exhausted, for these transports of

vague love wearied her more than great debauchery.

She now felt constant ache all over her. Often she even

received summonses, stamped paper that she barely looked

at. She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always

asleep.

On Mid-Lent she did not return to Yonville, but in the

evening went to a masked ball. She wore velvet breeches,

red stockings, a club wig, and three-cornered hat cocked

on one side. She danced all night to the wild tones of the

trombones; people gathered round her, and in the

morning she found herself on the steps of the theatre

together with five or six masks, debardeuses* and sailors,

Leon’s comrades, who were talking about having supper.

* People dressed as longshoremen.

The neighbouring cafes were full. They caught sight of

one on the harbour, a very indifferent restaurant, whose

proprietor showed them to a little room on the fourth

floor.

The men were whispering in a corner, no doubt

consorting about expenses. There were a clerk, two

medical students, and a shopman—what company for her!

As to the women, Emma soon perceived from the tone of

their voices that they must almost belong to the lowest

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class. Then she was frightened, pushed back her chair, and

cast down her eyes.

The others began to eat; she ate nothing. Her head was

on fire, her eyes smarted, and her skin was ice-cold. In her

head she seemed to feel the floor of the ball-room

rebounding again beneath the rhythmical pulsation of the

thousands of dancing feet. And now the smell of the

punch, the smoke of the cigars, made her giddy. She

fainted, and they carried her to the window.

Day was breaking, and a great stain of purple colour

broadened out in the pale horizon over the St. Catherine

hills. The livid river was shivering in the wind; there was

no one on the bridges; the street lamps were going out.

She revived, and began thinking of Berthe asleep

yonder in the servant’s room. Then a cart filled with long

strips of iron passed by, and made a deafening metallic

vibration against the walls of the houses.

She slipped away suddenly, threw off her costume, told

Leon she must get back, and at last was alone at the Hotel

de Boulogne. Everything, even herself, was now

unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a

bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of

purity, and there grow young again.

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She went out, crossed the Boulevard, the Place

Cauchoise, and the Faubourg, as far as an open street that

overlooked some gardens. She walked rapidly; the fresh air

calming her; and, little by little, the faces of the crowd, the

masks, the quadrilles, the lights, the supper, those women,

all disappeared like mists fading away. Then, reaching the

‘Croix-Rouge,’ she threw herself on the bed in her little

room on the second floor, where there were pictures of

the ‘Tour de Nesle.’ At four o’clock Hivert awoke her.

When she got home, Felicite showed her behind the

clock a grey paper. She read—

‘In virtue of the seizure in execution of a judgment.’

What judgment? As a matter of fact, the evening before

another paper had been brought that she had not yet seen,

and she was stunned by these words—

‘By order of the king, law, and justice, to Madame

Bovary.’ Then, skipping several lines, she read, ‘Within

twenty-four hours, without fail—’ But what? ‘To pay the

sum of eight thousand francs.’ And there was even at the

bottom, ‘She will be constrained thereto by every form of

law, and notably by a writ of distraint on her furniture and

effects.’

What was to be done? In twenty-four hours—

tomorrow. Lheureux, she thought, wanted to frighten her

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again; for she saw through all his devices, the object of his

kindnesses. What reassured her was the very magnitude of

the sum.

However, by dint of buying and not paying, of

borrowing, signing bills, and renewing these bills that

grew at each new falling-in, she had ended by preparing a

capital for Monsieur Lheureux which he was impatiently

awaiting for his speculations.

She presented herself at his place with an offhand air.

‘You know what has happened to me? No doubt it’s a

joke!’

‘How so?’

He turned away slowly, and, folding his arms, said to

her—

‘My good lady, did you think I should go on to all

eternity being your purveyor and banker, for the love of

God? Now be just. I must get back what I’ve laid out.

Now be just.’

She cried out against the debt.

‘Ah! so much the worse. The court has admitted it.

There’s a judgment. It’s been notified to you. Besides, it

isn’t my fault. It’s Vincart’s.’

‘Could you not—?’

‘Oh, nothing whatever.’

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‘But still, now talk it over.’

And she began beating about the bush; she had known

nothing about it; it was a surprise.

‘Whose fault is that?’ said Lheureux, bowing ironically.

‘While I’m slaving like a nigger, you go gallivanting

about.’

‘Ah! no lecturing.’

‘It never does any harm,’ he replied.

She turned coward; she implored him; she even pressed

her pretty white and slender hand against the shopkeeper’s

knee.

‘There, that’ll do! Anyone’d think you wanted to

seduce me!’

‘You are a wretch!’ she cried.

‘Oh, oh! go it! go it!’

‘I will show you up. I shall tell my husband.’

‘All right! I too. I’ll show your husband something.’

And Lheureux drew from his strong box the receipt for

eighteen hundred francs that she had given him when

Vincart had discounted the bills.

‘Do you think,’ he added, ‘that he’ll not understand

your little theft, the poor dear man?’

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She collapsed, more overcome than if felled by the